Intermedia Exchange Email

Pros

Cons

Missing some of the bleeding-edge mail features of Microsoft Office 365.

Can be slightly more expensive depending on options.

Bottom Line

If the largely self-guided process of Microsoft Office 365 seems unattractive, then Intermedia Exchange Mail is for you.
This service combines excellent support and a white-glove install to deliver everything you need in a hosted Exchange email service, without headaches.

Nov. 8, 2018

Intermedia Exchange Email starts at $7.49 per user per month and differentiates itself by taking its core service offering, Microsoft Exchange Online, and focusing its value-adds on security and white glove support. The result is a hosted email service with unlimited mailbox storage, 24/7 phone support, and a 99.999-percent, financially-backed uptime guarantee, Intermedia is already at the head of the pack in terms of features and capabilities. But now add a dedicated support team that handles email migration and setup for you for free, and you'll know why it's our Editors' Choice winner in the hosted email provider category, along with Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium.

Optionally, for $14.99 per user per month, you can get all of the above plus Intermedia's resold Microsoft Office 365 services. While more expensive than Microsoft Office 365 at face value, there's a lot of value-add that Intermedia threw into the mix that makes the extra dollars worth it, in my opinion (see below). The only thing I didn't like at the outset was that a free trial isn't readily available, though you can request a demo through the sales team. While that's okay, Intermedia should realize that, for many organizations, a demo isn't for a buying decision: a hands-on evaluation period is a must-have.

Getting Started

Setup with Intermedia begins with a phone call. The company does a beautiful job of kickstarting everything from there. It's worth noting that each installation is going to be a little bit different and so the combination of services required during set up will vary. But regardless of which features are chosen, each step is expertly handled by Intermedia's white-glove setup team. You'll start out with a temporary subdomain on its hostpilot.com domain, but the setup team will then walk you through setting up your own custom domain with the registrar. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable, that doing so will require some manual steps on your part, though the setup team will be able to guide you somewhat there, too.

Once setup is complete, you'll have access to the Intermedia Exchange Email control panel. I really liked the efficiency and design of this user interface (UI), comparable to any of the big players ,whether Google G Suite Business or Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium. The home page has quick links to the major tasks that you will typically need to do, such as creating users, accessing Microsoft Office apps, or setting up security policies. If for some reason you can't find something, then there's a search box in the upper right-hand corner that can help you find the right resource.

Adding and managing users is a simple endeavor. They can be added individually, imported from a comma separated values (CSV) file or synced from an on-premises Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domain controller by using UserPilot, Intermedia's own home-rolled AD migration tool. Again, the white-glove setup team can be of help here, too.

Email and Collaboration Tools

For email access, in addition to Microsoft Outlook, most users will use Outlook Web Access (OWA), which is Microsoft's standard web client for its Exchange-based email service. It's very similar to Office 365, and offers a lot of the same features. It has a sleek and modern look, and has the same mail, calendar, contact, and task support that you would want from any Microsoft Exchange installation. There is, of course, IMAP and POP IMAP and POP support as well, so your mobile devices and third-party clients are also welcome.

Out of the box, you'll get a unique backup and file sharing app called SecuriSync Backup that offers 10 gigabytes (GB) of space per user. While I found the tool to be enough for most instances, it's not quite at the level of what you'd get with a dedicated business cloud storage service, such as Dropbox Business. In addition, you'll get Microsoft Skype for Business, Microsoft's flagship communication tool.

Depending on how much you want to pay, you can also add additional services to your Intermedia account for collaboration, such as Microsoft SharePoint Online, which begins at $19.95 per month. Intermedia has the advantage in terms of mixing and matching the right services for your business. That said, I found myself preferring Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium for the flexibility and sheer number of additional tools available at no additional charge.

Security and Privacy

Intermedia uses its own in-house-developed combination of tools for a combined anti-spam/antivirus/anti-phishing defense. Based on Cloudmark and SpamAssassin, two popular spam-filtering packages, the system will attempt to score each email based on multiple databases of spam signatures. Messages with viruses and dangerous attachments are rejected outright. A spam score of 3 is a threshold for marking an email as spam and anything above a score of 20 is deleted. These thresholds can be shifted on the Advanced Email Security configuration page and the option to delete can be disabled entirely.

As part of Email Protection, which is a minor upgrade option under Package Management, users will also be protected by Intermedia LinkSafe, which protects users against malicious links by rewriting suspect URLs to prevent users from accessing the rogue website. I found this to be highly effective and comparable to the protections found under Google G Suite Business and Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium. Even better, it's all manageable through a nicely intuitive security dashboard that's very reminiscent of what you would find under Microsoft Office 365.

In terms of safety, Intermedia has placed heavy emphasis on privacy and security. In addition to having SOC 2 and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 compliance, they share data only on a need-to-know basis. Their SOC 2 report is available on request, which details their actual technical procedures. However, since it can reveal a significant amount of information regarding their security stance, it's not publicly available. They are also able to assist with Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)compliance for those who need to meet those demands. Still if data safety and privacy are overarching concerns for your organization, you should still back up Intermedia's offerings with data encryption and make sure to access the service only through a virtual private network (VPN) service.

Overall, Intermedia obviously spends considerable time on its security capabilities and policies, which sets it apart from email hosters we tested that aim their services at smaller operations, such as IceWarp Cloud or Zoho Mail.

Integrations

The only arena in which Intermedia falls short of the big players, especially Google and Microsoft, is in the area of third-party integrations. That's primarily because it doesn't have a marketplace of prebuilt integrations for popular third-party web services like those players do. On the plus side, however, Intermedia does offer the necessary compatibility with Microsoft Office products and platforms, so it's possible some of Microsoft's integrations will also work with Intermedia, but you'll need to test that yourself. While it would have been nice to see some of the openness you'll find in the Microsoft Office 365 service (which Intermedia also resells), this isn't reflected in the company's dedicated, hosted Exchange email platform. This basically makes Intermedia's Exchange Email something of an island if you're looking to integrate it with services such as Dropbox Business or Slack.

Overall, Intermedia Exchange Email is a friendly gateway to Microsoft Exchange and related products. The company really excels at support and its team knows what they are doing. If you don't want to spend a lot of time fiddling with your hosted email solution, then it's an undeniably good bet to go with these folks. You'll pay a small premium for it, but for many, it will be worth the cost. This is especially true if you chop out the tools you don't need and let Intermedia focus on what's core to your operation.

Intermedia Exchange Email

Bottom Line: Intermedia Hosted Exchange takes an excellent, but largely self-directed Microsoft Exchange Online experience and adds white glove support services. The result should be attractive to many small and midsized businesses.